RIP Antonin Scalia

The test is over the long run does it require the society to adhere to those principles contained in the Constitution or does it lead to a society that is essentially governed by nine justices’ version of what equal protection ought to mean?

He was an originalist, looking for what the Founders meant, and he stuck to the text. The Constitution meant what it said, not what someone pretended they wanted it to say.

His importance couldn’t be understated as someone who understood that laws mean something, that they have to mean what they say. There’s no subjective “interpretation”, there’s “what does it say?” A strong basis of what the rules are, of lawfulness, allows for stability and certainty. It’s the kind of things nations need, markets need, individuals need.

There will be others who eulogize him far better than I do in these few sentences, but he was someone who let you know what the rules were, and someone who sought to make them clear. His rulings helped make for a nation closer to one where there’s no need for a law degree to understand the laws that you have to live within and follow, no need to worry that laws would be made unequal because someone wanted to make themselves “more equal”, and no need to worry someone would use laws you couldn’t understand and couldn’t follow against you.

He will be missed, and his passing marks a potentially terrifying shift further from liberty.

–

If it’s to be believed, Republicans in the Senate are going to try to hold the line against progressive leftist tyranny until such time as at least the next president can appoint a justice:

We the People have been let down by the likes of McConnell enough that we know that statement’s not worth the paper it’s printed on or the electrons that show it on a screen… but here’s hoping that the election year prompts, as Milton Friedman would advise us “to get the wrong people to do the right thing”.

“The fact of the matter is that it’s been standard practice over the last 80 years to not confirm Supreme Court nominees during a presidential election year,” Grassley said.

“Given the huge divide in the country, and the fact that this president, above all others, has made no bones about his goal to use the courts to circumvent Congress and push through his own agenda, it only makes sense that we defer to the American people who will elect a new president to select the next Supreme Court Justice.”…

In his remarks, Grassley called Scalia, who died Saturday at the age of 79, “an intellectual giant.”

“He had an unwavering dedication to the founding document that has guided our country for nearly 230 years,” he said of Scalia’s interpretation of the Constitution. “His humor, devotion to the Constitution and quick wit will be remembered for years to come.”